'Warcraft' pol: Gaming misjudged

The Maine state Senate candidate attacked by the GOP for her double-life as an “orc assassination rogue” on the online game "World of Warcraft" is swinging a figurative battle axe back at her foes — saying their attacks are baffling.

Colleen Lachowicz, a Democrat targeted by a Republican website created to “expose” her game-playing, told POLITICO late Thursday that her enemies are out-of-touch if they think being a gamer is shameful.

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“There are a lot of these misconceptions about people who play online games,” said Lachowicz, who has a Master’s degree in social work and runs a division of a statewide mental health facility. “I’ve played with people who are retired, college professors and lawyers. I’ve only ever played with adults.”

She pointed to data from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board that said the video game industry generates $24.8 billion in revenue, 183 million Americans play some sort of video game and the average age of players is 34. Famous gamers, she said, include Jodie Foster, Vin Diesel and Robin Williams.

Lachowicz, 48, was blistered by an attack by the Maine GOP on Thursday that mocked her for her persona of Santiaga, an “orc assassination rogue” in the popular online game “World of Warcraft.” The party sent out a mailer showing her avatar, which has green skin, fangs and pointy ears, along with provocative excerpts from postings she made on the "World of Warcraft" section of DailyKos.com.

She said she doesn’t even play that much anymore. She’s only logged on a few times in recent months in part, she said, because she’s been busy knocking on doors and campaigning to unseat first-term incumbent Tom Martin. Martin, who owns an excavation business, is the first Republican to hold the seat in the heavily Democratic south-central Maine district since the 1960s.

Martin said he was unaware of the party's attacks on Lachowicz until contacted by reporters, and he doesn’t condone them. Both candidates are declared “clean election candidates,” which means they’ve both vowed to abstain from negative campaigning and can only spend the amount they receive from public funding and a limited amount of donations.